Rep. Reid Ribble: DHS Funding Fight Was Worth Having

Even though the fight over the Department of Homeland Security funding bill in Congress in an effort to defund President Barack Obama's executive actions on immigration was destined to fail, it was a fight worth having, Wisconsin Rep. Reid Ribble tells Newsmax TV.

"The point of the matter wasn't necessarily whether the president would accept it or not because everybody recognizes that he would veto it," Reid said Wednesday on "America's Forum" with J.D. Hayworth and Miranda Khan.

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"The point of the matter was to highlight what the American people already know," he explained.

The House passed a "clean" DHS funding bill Tuesday, which did not include any restrictions on Obama's executive actions after a long battle.

A Texas federal judge ruled in February that Obama exceeded his authority with his executive actions designed to protect millions of illegal immigrants from being deported.

"There's been a federal judge that said the president's action is unlawful and so on that basis alone, the Congress should do whatever it can to prevent the president from executing an unlawful edict," he said.

"That's what the House Republicans were trying to do, but we can do the math, and we knew where this would end up ultimately, but informing the American people and talking to the American people and seeing and showing them that we're willing to do what we could here before a judge ultimately rules on it — we believe we will prevail in that ruling," the Wisconsin Republican contends.

"We felt that was an important fight to be in," he added.

Even though the outcome was "disappointing because it seemed like we stopped there . . . I felt we should have stayed in the fight," Ribble said.

Republican strategist Ford O'Connell, who also appeared on Newsmax TV with the Wisconsin Republican, said that the reason why the DHS funding bill the Republicans were proposing failed is because "principle doesn't win tough legislating fights, messaging does, and the Republicans got outflanked on messaging."

"When you get outflanked in a messaging game, I have a hard time believing that we're going to beat Obama down the line because we're going to have more of this," O'Connell added.

Ribble said that he agrees with O'Connell, adding that "you have to put a lot of it on the Senate."

"The House acted five or six weeks ago," he explained. "Five weeks ago had we started and had our leadership started to actually start talking about in front of the American people for five weeks on the Senate's inaction in this regard, we could've won . . . some of the public debate.

Even though the fight over the Department of Homeland Security funding bill in Congress in an effort to defund President Barack Obama's executive actions on immigration was destined to fail, it was a fight worth having, Wisconsin Rep. Reid Ribble tells Newsmax TV.